A married couple finds their relationship strained to the max, with their disdain for one another growing to the point of hatred, absurdity, and an explosive divorce. Literally.
The War of the Roses is one of my favorite comedies. There’s something so unflinchingly bold and hilarious about the absurdity of the on-screen dynamic of Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas. Even so, I truly wanted to love The Roses. I felt that having a fresh take on a story about splintering love turned cold was perfect. Times have changed so much since the original, and the source novel, that I was looking forward to seeing how wild and over the top they would be willing to go with so many new adventures to explore. Unfortunately, what we got was a rather tame family drama with light comedy elements and some weird and tonally awkward commentaries on the “new normal” that is the modern day family unit. Commentaries that aren’t exactly progressive.
As a readaptation of the novel by Warren Adler, but certifying itself as a “reimagining” rather than a remake, Jay Roach gives us what feels like an attempt at a good film that comes up way too short. Instead of leaning into what could’ve been an audaciously funny and absurd thrill ride of escalating efforts to destroy one another, Tony McNamara’s script is a long walk up to an underwhelming inciting incident that weirdly preaches to us about the detriment of the mother working outside the home, the fact that stay at home fathers feel unfulfilled and are incapable of raising children properly, and, strangely, the supposed “comedic value”of the oddity that is an open marriage. News flash; portraying the open marriage couple as being unconsenting for the sake of laughs is really tone-deaf, especially when you’ve got a lesbian playing one half of that couple.
All that said, the two leads are phenomenal, specifically Benedict Cumberbatch. His role of Theo is adorable and endearing, and he was responsible for several of the moments that did manage to make me belly laugh. His delivery of certain lines is spot on perfection, and he even had me in tears during one of his more emotional scenes. Olivia Colman is also wonderful, though her character of Ivy boils down to being weirdly unlikeable, petty, and ungrateful, which isn’t exactly the qualities you want to have in a film that’s supposed to walk the line of making both sides equally to blame and despicable. In fact, it’s strange that some of the more unhinged behaviors towards the end of the film come from Theo as opposed to Ivy, considering her abrasive and crappy behavior up to that point. Outside of the lead characters, however, the rest of the cast is dull, flat, and oftentimes offensive. We have characters who say vile and crude things just for the sake of shock value, Andy Samberg is just kind of “there,” and Kate McKinnon feels like a caricature of what could’ve been a representative LGBTQ character.
That’s without even mentioning the CGI work, which looks suspiciously like generative AI, or the CGI department is completely unaware how physics work. It’s dreadfully bad, and disappointing to see such a high value Hollywood film resort to such cheapened methods of depicting a disaster. I will say that Theodore Shapiro’s score is fun and well done, and the cinematography by Florian Hoffmeister is out of this world, but it’s all wasted efforts on a film that doesn’t deliver.
While it could’ve been a fantastic modernized spin on a spectacular comedy staple, The Roses is one of those films that would’ve benefited from a few more drafts and maybe the contributions of a more comedically talented writer. It just isn’t coming up roses this time around.